1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus and method for setting up Quality of Service (QoS) in a wireless communication system. More particularly, the present invention relates to an apparatus and method for ensuring end-to-end QoS in a Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) communication system.
2. Description of the Related Art
There is a growing demand for services featuring various traffic capabilities, for example, a variety of multimedia application services (e.g., Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), real-time games, Video on Demand (VoD), etc.). With the increase in available types of services and the diversification in service level requirements of a user, communication systems now have to not only consider system capability but also Quality of Service (QoS). QoS represents user satisfaction. Moreover, since available resources vary in a wireless communication system due to a time-variable environment and a mobility of Mobile Stations (MSs), a policy for ensuring QoS is necessary.
Many wireless communication techniques are being proposed to achieve a high-speed mobile communication. Among them, an Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) scheme is one of the next generation wireless communication techniques. The OFDM scheme is expected to be widely used as a future wireless communication technique, and is currently used as a standard in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.16-based Wireless Metropolitan Area Network (WMAN) which is known as the 3.5 Generation (3.5G) technology.
However, the conventional Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) standard only defines an interoperation process of Media Access Control (MAC) layer QoS and does not provide a network interoperation process for ensuring end-to-end QoS that is noticeable to the user. In other words, in an IEEE 802.16-based network in which a PHYsical (PHY)/MAC layer is supported, only a DSx interoperation process between a Base Station (BS) and an MS is defined, wherein Dynamic Service Addition (DSA) represents service generation, Dynamic Service Deletion (DSD) represents service deletion, and Dynamic Service Change (DSC) represents service change.
End-to-end QoS of an application layer has to be ensured to enhance service quality that is noticeable to the user. Therefore, when using a BWA system in which only MAC layer QoS is defined, the interoperation process for QoS setup has to be defined among MSs, access networks, and core networks.